Q&A: I was suspended by Amazon alliance. How can I reopen my seller account?
QUESTION: I recently began selling on Amazon and had been having great success, selling an average of five books a day. However, today I was suspended from Marketplace after receiving a message from Amazon Alliance. The message said that my account has been linked to another account that was closed for violating Amazon's "Community Rules."I have no idea what this is about. Do you have any suggestions on how I can get back on Amazon and clear up this mess?
ANSWER: Amazon Alliance polices Marketplace by kicking off unethical sellers -- those caught selling pirated products or those who have excessive refunds or A to Z claims.
By and large, I think this system works pretty well, and is one of the reasons the typical Marketplace buying experience is positive. The problem is, there's no apparent communications channel when Alliance makes a mistake. Apparently Alliance screens seller accounts for names, phone numbers, or addresses they've identified previously as a bad sellers. When they have a match, they block your account and send this message:
Greetings from Amazon.com.It certainly does seem unfair and downright un-American to terminate someone with no appeal process. Since Alliance doesn't suggest any alternative, try this:
This message is to inform you that we have blocked your Amazon.com Auctions, zShops and Marketplace account. Your open listings have been cancelled and you are no longer able to sell on our site.
We have taken this action because it has come to our attention that this account is related to an account which has been previously blocked for violations of our Community Rules.
While we do not provide detailed information on how we link related accounts, we have thoroughly reviewed our records and confirmed that we have significant evidence that this account is related to another account previously closed for community rules violations.
If you still have items to ship, please take appropriate steps to resolve your pending sales. Your Seller Account will remain accessible and you are encouraged to refund or ship pending orders.
Your funds are on temporary hold for 90 days from the date of your final sale. After 90 days, the funds will be disbursed, provided we do not receive chargebacks or A-to-Z Guarantee claims against your sales. If you have further questions about your disbursement, please email payments-funds@amazon.com.
While we appreciate your interest, please understand that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your understanding with our decision.
Regards,
Item and Seller Quality
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com
1. Call Seller Support at 1-877-251-0696. Ask to speak with a supervisor.
2. Write to community-help@amazon.com.
3. Send the same message to reports@amazon.com, the address where Community Rules violations are reported.
4. Send the same message to alliance@amazon.com.
5. Send the same message to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' staff at jeff@amazon.com
If anyone knows of a more effective way of dealing with this, I hope they'll chime in with a comment.
UPDATE: Two weeks after his original message, our correspondent reported good news:
I used the contacts you sent me and was able to clear everything up. I did buy a used computer and think somehow this flagged Amazon of past problems. Thanks for the advice.
That's interesting, and a possibility I never thought of -- that they're identifying sellers by the machine, perhaps cookies? If that's the case, it might be best to log into your seller account only on your home PC, and certainly not at a public library. And if you purchase a used PC, reformatting the hard drive is probably a good idea too.
Labels: Amazon Alliance
posted by Steve Weber at 12/10/2006
14 Comments:
Hi Steve --
While it sounds like the seller here did in fact receive a legitimate email from Amazon and had to clear up his problem to begin selling again, I thought I would take the opportunity to warn other new sellers (and maybe even some experienced ones) that I received a similar email shortly after I started selling books. Only, mine was not a legitimate email from Amazon, but a "phishing" expedition from some unscrupulous scammer looking for my account information. The email I received said my account had been suspended -- used all of the same words in your writer's email, and I was dumbstruck -- and as a new seller, pretty gullible. What had I done?! Well, it turns out, nothing. I called Amazon support immediately and was told that my account was indeed still active and there had been no issue. The phishing email had a link (which I clicked on, but did not enter any information) that then went to a bogus Amazon page and asked me to enter my account information (name, password, etc.). If I had entered the information requseted, I would have given the phisher access to my account -- and all of the sensitive banking information. Chances are these scammers would use unsuspecting sellers' info to transfer earnings over to their own bank accounts, or who knows what else. Please warn other sellers that not all emails of this nature are official and they should always check with Amazon directly before proceeding.
Hope you don't mind the long message. I thought it was important to relate my experience.
I too received a phishing Amazon e-mail two days ago. I was suspicious of it from the start, and thanks to a heads up from Amazon Soapbox Community my suspicions were verified.
I think it is important to share my story on this. I was selling well on amazon.com with over 600 feedback and 99% of them positive. Of course, I had more than 5000 transaction on amazon.com. All of sudden they discovered that my account was linked to some other "Bad" account and they had shut me down. It was shocking and very tough to swallow. I started with one book and bloated my inventory to over 3000 book based on my amazon.com sales. All of sudden I was out of business. Of course, they do not provide any explanation or there is no fair way to argue your case. I can swear that I had no other account and they never told me how they linked it. As in all business, I guess, all professional should be at least worry about this HUGE business risk. It could really put you any one out of business overnight. I truly believe this is not fair and there should be a fair resolution process for seller who achieve certain minimum level(500 feedback, 50000+ in sales or more than 2 year old account or something like that). I think this is much more serious issue than what sellers think, until it happens to them. Please post your comments en masse here. Thanks
Amazon is very particular about certain things. 1. You cannot have multiple accounts under ANY circumstances. 2. They track via IP address, ISP and MAC addresses, so library computers, used computers, etc are all big no-no's.
It's extraordinarily difficult to get an Alliance boot reversed.
PS Multiple accounts means not only yourself, but anyone you share a computer, an IP address, a physical address, a bank account and/or a credit card with. As I said--they are WAY picky.
You could certainly sue Amazon for civil damages. You would not get reinstated, but you could get lost profits if you win. As to the chances of prevailing, I have not researched that, but during discovery you could force Amazon to reveal the basis of their termination of your account.
Change the MAC address of your LAN card.
And better to use win98 than XP(they take too much informations from your computer with XP), and much better to use other than windows.
I am so very sorry to bother you with my problem,I have never written an email to anyone for help until now but I have tried everything else and I am hoping that someone (even one person with influence) may be able to help me. I will try to give you the short version of a long story.
I was a video tape seller on Amazon.com, I started this when I was laid off from a big corporation and could not find work. I was doing allright and made some money from this for a while, not alot but enough to support my family but no more.
All was going fine for over 7 years but I am sorry to report, actually I am devastated to tell you that the amazon "Alliance" (an amazon watchdog team that sellers refer to as "The Gestapo" because they do what they want to whomever they want and do not have to have proof of wrongdoing to ruin someones life) have made a terrible mistake by blocking my account. This means I can not get paid the money that customers have already sent for videos they purchased from me. They say they are holding the funds for up to 90 days. Which means I may and probably will not ever get the money. This is an error on their part that they say they will not reverse.
They have stated that they have blocked my account because I they feel i have tried to "Divert" customers from amazon, an accusation which is Absolutely Not True! Not one of my customers have ever stated this, And that they have absolutely no proof of whatsoever. I have Never tried to divert even one customer from the amazon site.
This is a terrible error on their part but so far they have refused to even consider unblocking my account. Meanwhile, I have no job (Retired), no money coming in and I am losing thousands of dollars that my wife and three kids depend on to live.
I had an excellent feedback rating from my customers before this incident and many have written on my behalf to tell amazon that I Never, tried to divert them from the amazon site. I also have documented proof that what they accuse is not true. Also, I have found there are many websites dedicated to this problem they main one is (ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff169143.htm) and it is sad that amazon is doing this to countless others and getting away with it.
PS. Actually, anything anyone can do to help would be greatly appreciated. Thank You All!
Hello Steve and others,
I am sorry that this has happened to you. Sometimes life is not always fair.
However, it is Amazon's website and therefore, they make the rules. I highly doubt that any of you could even have a chance of suing amazon. It is not Amazon's fault that you are out now out of a job, and no, Amazon did not ruin your business. Perhaps it will not be as easy to sell online without Amazon, but you do have options. HAve you thought about ebay? Half? Or perhaps opening your own website?
We just had our Amazon account suspended due to them linking up a failed attempt from 2004 with our current seller account, which had a 98% positive feedback rate, and 32,000 orders since 2005.
I emailed all the recommended emails (including Jeff Bezos) above, and called Amazon. They told me to email the "alliance" address.
I can't imagine why they would turn away all that business just because I accidentally used the old account to buy some Disney DVD's for my kids on the same home computer I would dilligently answer customer questions on, especially after almost three years of great service on the new account.
If anyone has any new suggestions, please let me know, as the alternative is shuttering the store at year's end and letting my 8 employeees go.
I read your post, this is a big problem. Is there any class action going on?
If not, should there be?
Imagine how much CASH, Amazon held by closing all the accounts.
If you know anything, let me know. I will do the same. Selling on Amazon was my job, I would not have risked it for anything.
Lucas
We were just closed ourselves for being linked to another account. Not sure why but we are new to this and trying to do everything we can. We've been selling for 11 years on eBay and have a very high percentage..we're a legitimate company with legitimate product. I really do not understand their reasoning...if anyone has a suggestion it would be very helpful.
Here are a few updates:
reports@amazon.com now sends you to the website, it is no longer a valid e-mail to send to.
alliance@amazon is apparently now:
seller-performance@amazon.com
I too have recently been blocked from selling for being linked to a previously account that has been blocked for violating amazon's policy.. I do not know what to do right now because i am out of money that i need and amazon said theres no way of reinstating this account.. The thing that got me is because i setup my account at my friends house and only use his personal computer for amazon and his computer is new but yet they still sent me a message stating it was linked to a previous blocked account.. Any ideas on how i can get my account back? Or how to create a new account where they cannot link me?????
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